SF Beta is proud to join forces with SF WIN for their holiday mixer, going live on Thursday, December 7.

SF WIN is a monthly mixer for web and tech folks, and they’ve got a lot in common with SF Beta. From my experience, their events are a little quieter than our mixer (volume-wise, that is — they tend to be just as well attended), with a slightly more established base of members. Held at the cushy law offices of Orrick, SF WIN welcomes in the web community while giving a handful of startups the chance to pitch their company in 60 seconds.

Come celebrate the holidays with SF Beta and SF WIN, and spread the 2.0 mirth like never before.
When: December 7, 6:00 PM
Where: Orrick (405 Howard St., SF)
Cost: $10 Advance / $20 at the door

RSVP Now, and hope to see you there!

Looking for something to do on a cold Thursday night in San Francisco? On November 30, head on over to Roe, where Guba and AlwaysOn join forces to bring you a free evening of networking.

The event is being organized by Adriana Gascoigne, Guba’s director of PR. While I haven’t been to her previous events, her reputation precedes her: the last networking event that Guba organized had more than 500 people!

Read more about it on Upcoming.org.

If you’re part of the bubble-surfing crowd, there’s a great new blog that helps you keep track of all the tech-fueled parties and soirées in the city and beyond. (Well, mostly in the city.) Please welcome Bub.blicio.us.

Launched as the brainchild of a small group of party-hopping tech scenesters, bub.liciou.us has great coverage on a bunch of events, including Laughing Squid Decade 2, Web2point2, and of course, SF Beta.

The founders are a talented bunch, including Brian Solis of Future Works, Joanne Wan formerly of Stirr, Greg Narain & Stowe Boyd of Blue Whale Labs, and Julie Blaustein of PhotoBucket.

What inspired this hot new blog? In the words of one of the founders, Brian Solis,

After attending an overwhelming series of parties, events, and conferences, a group of dedicated professionals and talented writers decided to band together to cover the rapidly inflating bubble of events, startups, and ultimately (and hopefully) the Silicon Valley economy.

Check out the blog, and enjoy the party, Web 2.0 style.

SF Beta came to life again on Thursday, November 16, bringing together a packed house at Shine Lounge at 1337 Misison Street. With over 165 confirmed attendees, this was our biggest event by far, surpassing last month’s numbers by at least 35%.

We had a rich and varied audience, including over 55 founders, several dozen bloggers and developers, and handfulls of lawyers, designers, consultants, and more. There were people from Yahoo, Google and Microsoft right down to one-man-band startups in the early idea phase.

Most people came to SF Beta to do what one does best at a club: drink and socialize. It seemed to me that our crowd was younger and more animated than at a lot of other networking events, and perhaps the loose, casual format had something to do with it. While the crowded room once again made it difficult to move around, I’ve heard from a number of people that they were able to enjoy good conversations with both new and familiar people.

Halfway through the event, Rafe Needleman kicked off our trademark Limerick Presentations, featuring six up-and-coming startups. Rafe’s post has all the limericks in full form, along with insightful commentary. (”It’s a good thing that Joyent makes a decent small-business office suite, because this is just about the worst limerick I have ever heard.”) You can view a complete list of startup poetry on SF Beta’s own Bad Startup Poetry page, as well.

Our event got pretty decent coverage across the blogosphere — I would say the best of any event we’ve thrown so far. In addition to Rafe’s post, PavingWays chimed in with their personal account of the evening:

They offered not only name tags, but also about 10 other tags you could stick to your shirt, e.g. “foundr”, “bloggr”, “investr” … you could also get blank stickers to write on yourself, so we wrote “mobile”. Entrance fee was 10 bucks and drinks were not free, but it was still worth it.

Bub.blicio.us had some flattering things to say about the attractiveness of the crowd, at least on typical a geek scale:

Out of all the mixers/events/parties I’ve been to lately, I’d say SF Beta, by far, is drawing a more attractive crowd in general. In fact, one rather notable attendee of the female persuasion commented that she would bring more of her friends because there were actually “a lot of hot guys here.”

Woohoo! Thanks to everyone who came for making the night a big success. See you in December!